Pokemon bank launch delayed

Nintendo has announced that the launch of its PokeBank and PokeTransporter apps will be delayed owing to a large volume of traffic to the Nintendo Network service. The two apps were previously slated for a 27 December release in North America and Europe.

The company launched the two apps on 25 December in Japan. According to its Japanese site, Nintendo took the Pokemon Bank cloud storage app offline and removed it from the eShop in Japan owing to massive strain on company servers.

In a message on its site, where it announced the delay, Nintendo said: "Nintendo and The Pokémon Company International have postponed the launch of Pokémon Bank and Poké Transporter - two software applications that were originally scheduled to launch for Nintendo 3DS on Dec 27 - due to a large volume of traffic to the Nintendo Network service.

"Due to the high traffic, players are having trouble setting up Nintendo Network IDs and downloading content in the Nintendo eShop on both Wii U and Nintendo 3DS. We truly regret the inconvenience, and wish to reassure everyone that providing a solution is our top priority. We apologize for the delay and thank you for your continued patience."

The app is now off the e-shop and Nintendo is yet to offer details on when it will be available again. Users will have to pay a yearly subscription of $5 to access the service. The company also announced a free 30-day trial period for the PokeBank app upon launch.

The user overload created problems across Nintendo's servers, thereby affecting its 3DS and Wii U platforms, both of which were recently linked through the Nintendo Network ID System.

The incident is another indicator of the massive popularity of Nintendo's latest Pokemon games, Pokemon X and Pokemon Y, which went on to sell over 4 million copies within two days of its launch in Japan.

A new post from Kotaku says that despite the checks on the new service, gamers were still able to transfer illegal Pokemon to the next generation. The app has now been taken offline.